Pages

18 de agosto de 2013

THE TRUE SPIRIT OF INNOVATION

Reinhold Messner is a mountaineer, adventurer
and explorer from South Tyrol whose astonishing feats on Everest and on peaks
throughout the world have earned him the status of the greatest climber in
history, according to Wikipedia.

Messner has provided us with many reflections
and quotes about his philosophy of life, about the sense of taking risks, and
about leadership and challenge. These thoughts and readings are extremely
useful for management practice, mainly in turbulent, uncertain and risky times. Talking about innovation, he said that “the
true innovator is who goes there where nobody else is”. This wonderful
sentence summarizes the true, pioneering, sportive spirit of innovation: going
there, where no other has gone before.

It exceptionally clarifies the concept of
innovation from the management point of view: innovation is no mere
improvement, because improvement means no risk-assumption. Innovation
incorporates a superior level of risk, looking for an exclusive competitive space
(new combination of market and product, new business model or new way to do
things). This exclusivity will provide you with a superior competitive
advantage. What will you find, upon arriving to the summit, if you decide to innovate? Nothing. You will
find loneliness, silence and wild solitude… You will arrive where no other competitor is. In economic terms, loneliness means
no competition, a temporary monopoly. You will be diving in a blue ocean. And,
arriving first to the summit, will give you the possibility of building first-mover advantages (you
will be able to create entry barriers to new competitors through several
strategies: learning curve, brand, new aggressive investments in R+D, strategic
alliances with suppliers or distribution channels, privileged interaction with
the new market…)

Ascending to the summit, from an economic point
of view, is like ascending through the well known risk-competitive advantage curve (or, in financial terms, the risk-return of investment curve). A company can
decide stay in the bottom of the mountain, where everybody is hiking in the comfort zone
(and it should take into account that there will find a lot of other companies
doing the same). Or it can decide to go to the summit, innovate, take the entrepreneurial initiative, find exclusive spaces and obtain superior competitive advantages.
Many companies walk in the saturated forests. Only the true leaders dare to go to the summit.

Having the will to ascend means facing uncertainty and assuming risk. But
Messner was not suicidal. He assumed more risk than the average walkers, to
have the privilege of touching the sky, the intimal satisfaction of conquering
the mountain till the very summit. He obtained superior emotional returns to his effort. And to achieve his goals, he was well
trained, equipped and prepared, and studied in detail the path that conducts to the success. In the same manner, a firm should train and
develop methodologies to try to conquer the summit, to escape the bottom, and
avoid low-end and cost-erosive competition. A company can learn how to
innovate. And it must prepare the roadmap, experiment and train with discipline before the attack, to
maximize the success ratio. Innovation is, also, a learning process.

But above all, innovation is leadership. It is challenge and
freedom. Is competition and (even), it is sport. It is a true way of life.

Thanks to Reinhold Messner for his thoughts and teachings (and thanks to Albert
Bosch, Catalan adventurer and entrepreneur, for providing me with this illuminating
original Messner quote)